Month: June 2016

Successful commercialisation requires a great technology with differentiated IP, a sound strategy with clear execution, and a little bit of unexpected foresight.

Case in point, a RIG client had a market-leading technology, a clear but simple strategy that resonated with its customers, partners and employees, and a strong execution-focused team that collaborated closely across the different functions of R&D, production, marketing, sales and support. This put the company in a winning position. However, an unexpectedly genius bit of negotiation led to the first few years of growth and sales being far smoother than previously imagined.

The technology had been incubated in university and was godfathered by one of the world’s largest energy companies who had provided clear technical specs, some development funding, and some of their business units to act as field trial partners until a commercial version of the technology was available. The quid pro quo from our client was that the energy company had exclusive access to the technology for a period of time. In order for the technology and the company to be viable and valuable, it had to unshackle itself from its customer and prove that it had worldwide application within its target market.

We had prepped and planned the negotiation for weeks on ends mapping out the various stakeholders and persons of interest within the energy company. Over a several month negotiating cycle we managed to secure a removal of their exclusivity on the technology without any change in shareholding. The key concessions were royalties over time and a Most Favoured Nation (MFN) pricing structure for the energy company. Little did we know the second thing, which we saw as a necessary evil, became one of our client’s most powerful negotiation tools.

As we started commercialising the technology out in the global energy market we discovered that there was real interest in the problem our client was solving, and a real differentiation in how they solved it. The market was keen to adopt the technology and we were able to get through the technical qualification process and identify significant problems that we could solve so that budget could be secured for initial uses of the technology. While this process wasn’t rapid, reflecting the sales cycles in the energy industry, it was smooth progress. We believed that we’d hit rough waters when it came to procurement especially as we were selling this across the world and we believed that different geographies would have different spending thresholds. Sure enough, during negotiations, having agreed all the terms and conditions, and just before producing an order, procurement teams would invariably ask for discounts saying that the budget secured was only for a certain round figure. However we knew that the problem was significant, and that our client’s technology could solve the problem best, so we stuck to our guns. However the argument we used every time, and with significant credibility, was the MFN pricing. The conversation normally lasted as long as this:

Potential customer: We’d like a 20-30% discount on the unit price of your technology. Our budget is only x. Our internal customers (the operational and technology team) want to use your technology but you have to work with us to fit the budget.

Us: I’m sorry we can’t do that. Energy Company Y has a MFN pricing agreement with us where they get 5% less than the lowest price in the market. So if we discount you by 20-25% we’d have to do the same for them and given that their volumes are an order of magnitude higher than yours, we can’t afford to do that.

Potential customer: Ok understood. We’ll prepare the order in the next day.

As you’ll note, the conversation was never about your price versus your competitors because our sales process ensured that we had identified that the problem we were solving was significant and had established in the users’ minds that our technology was best equipped to solve it. As a result, it was never a competitive scenario so the lever the customer had was at best made of rubber while ours was made of steel. It was never a lever that we had ever remotely imagined we’d have to use.

We probably trotted that line out to 30 different customers in 15 different geographies during the first couple of years of commercialisation. It worked with everyone but one: a family-owned energy company in India from who we decided to walk away from after two years of discussions and negotiations. Speaking for my countrymen, despite us seeing the value and understanding the logic, we just can’t live without a discount!